I start to think that not feeding the hype train might indicate that Humankind won‘t release in April after all.
I start to think that not feeding the hype train might indicate that Humankind won‘t release in April after all.
I think Humankind had a strong tailwind when everything was happening around the lucy opendev and the hype was building (I even managed to get 1000 views for my first lucy video within 1-2 days), but the sudden radio silence outside of some niche forums and a few developer diaries has certainly tempered my expectations.
I think I will still preorder the game because people want to see it, but I feel that the atmosphere has changed around the game and Civ 6 is gaining back its gallop with the consistent free updates and the new barbarians mode. Also, they (Firaxis) know when to dangle the carrot at least for me because 2/3 civilizations getting reworked makes me want to switch my attention to their franchise
Humankind could still knock it out of the park, but I don’t know if it will be quite the home run. Then again, who knows
I think Humankind had a strong tailwind when everything was happening around the lucy opendev and the hype was building (I even managed to get 1000 views for my first lucy video within 1-2 days), but the sudden radio silence outside of some niche forums and a few developer diaries has certainly tempered my expectations.
This is a very strange idea.Given that I dual wield college majors at the moment, and have like four other video games planned to finish/play with, I'd actually love to see Humankind postponed few months.
If my expectations of vaccination campaigns are correct, that would also bring the benefit of HK release coming at the twilight of Covid era* instead of the middle of the second wave. How glorious would it be, for a game paying respect to the human progress to be released at the time when we will (hopefully) witness the enormous achievement of global covid vaccine.
On another hand, late this year Warhammer 3 will be released (another game on top of my pile...) and Humankind devs certainly wouldn't like to compete with that beast of a strategy game. So if it is postponed, I expect it to release in Summer or September at the latest.
Random thought of the day: today it would be obviously tasteless, but give it 20 years and Humankind 4 will feature "pandemic" as a late game event. Good handling of the pandemic gets some fame, winning the race for the Vaccine wins a ton of fame, manufacturing it for other countries and helping them wins a ton of fame as well. It is honestly the perfect scenario for such strategy game, you could even amorally sabotage rival vaccines. As I said, just give it time...
* - for northern hemisphere at least
On another hand, late this year Warhammer 3 will be released (another game on top of my pile...) and Humankind devs certainly wouldn't like to compete with that beast of a strategy game. So if it is postponed, I expect it to release in Summer or September at the latest.
I don't see that much overlap with the Total War series. Certainly not enough for them to try to schedule their release around. There are other products that probably compete more. Plus, Creative Assembly is always releasing new stuff.
Random thought of the day: today it would be obviously tasteless, but give it 20 years and Humankind 4 will feature "pandemic" as a late game event. Good handling of the pandemic gets some fame, winning the race for the Vaccine wins a ton of fame, manufacturing it for other countries and helping them wins a ton of fame as well. It is honestly the perfect scenario for such strategy game, you could even amorally sabotage rival vaccines. As I said, just give it time...
. . . I don't think it's tasteless to represent pandemics in games in an abstract manner. We have no issues with representations of crime and war. The Pandemic board game is highly successful and the whole Zombie pop culture is about pandemics. If there are reservations regarding such representations in the current environment, I think it's less from the part of consumers and more about businesses being overly careful.
Besides, why 20 years? You say it like you expect this pandemic to be a one off thing. I think people will just learn to live with the possibility of global pandemics and adjust their expectations accordingly.
Seeing how pandemics have been crucial to human history, I'd expect disease and pandemics either at release or in a future DLC for Humankind.
. . . Of course Total War Attila works off four turns per year a much,much tighter timeframe than Humankind! I'm not sure how you should implement disease in a somewhat reasonable way as Boris is right that it would probably just be your empire losing half its population in a turn. I think it is generally abstracted as limited urban growth like Civ's housing mechanic.
I think we have some events about disease, but there's no "system" for diseases and epidemics. Perhaps it could be something to look at for future content.